


Uncomfortable truths

by Perspicacia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Knight Dooku, Padawan Qui-Gon Jinn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 13:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12255237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perspicacia/pseuds/Perspicacia
Summary: Yan Dooku’s unwillingness to allow other to help him, his certitude he had all the answers, had always been his personal downfall…and that and his lineages taste for drama had finally come together for a scene: Yan Dooku and his Padawan were having what would have qualified as a screaming match for anyone else.





	Uncomfortable truths

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the Mod I of the jedifest team for the swifest of beta!

 

 

In one of the training room of the Jedi Temple, Master T'ra Saa simply stood and watched the drama unfolding before her. She had been going a few rounds, saber against saber, against Yan Dooku, a worthy opponent, the only Knight who could challenge her, while her fellow Master Yaddle was giving a private tutoring session to the man's Padawan, the young Qui-Gon Jinn. Since his latest growth spurt he'd had difficulties guarding himself against very small opponents, something his giant of a Master couldn’t exactly help him with.

And then, drama had started, almost about nothing. As much as she respected Master Yoda, she sometimes asked herself what was wrong with his lineage, for it to be so full of dramatic, stubborn idiots incapable of learning because they had decided they were right and the entire galaxy was wrong.

Both of them being members of long-lived species, she had known Yoda for a very long time and she had observed the many lines he had started. Some had already died down; sometimes the young Knight that had been his Padawan had passed away too young, without taking a student, sometimes it had been three, four Knights down the line…. It was the curse of their species, long-lived in a galaxy where the average sentient didn’t live long enough to be considered even a Youngling in their own eyes. She had known a lot of his lines personally, she had kept vigil with him during long nights when one of his grandpadawan had been slowly losing her fight against illness, not eighty years ago, yesterday in their eyes.

Yes, she had known almost all of them, and they all had been as full of drama as a lead in the Aldernaniaan Ballet.

And the human Jedi Knight Yan Dooku, thirty-one years old and soon to be a Master, wasn’t an exception.

He did a better impersonation of functioning, logical being: the aristocratic poise helped, as much as it was a mystery how he'd developed it so well, since he had been raised in the Temple and not in the fold of his own family. Still, frugal life since childhood or not, he always gave the impression he was one minute away from talking about porcelain cabinets while leaning elegantly against a marquetry commode. Since generations of inbreeding in most of the galaxy aristocratic lines had produced people that kept their dramas behind closed doors and presented a united front to the public, people, even Jedi, saw him tall and composed, never a strand of hair out of place, and they allowed themselves to be deceived.

It helped, of course, that he was of a shape that a lot of humanoids found charming: two days before, Knight Jocasta Nu and Knight Syfo-Dias had walked into each other when he had taken his tunic off during hand-to-hand training.

But Yan Dooku’s unwillingness to allow other to help him, his certitude he had all the answers, had always been his personal downfall…and that and his lineages taste for drama had finally come together for a scene: Yan Dooku and his Padawan were having what would have qualified as a screaming match for anyone else.

Of course, Dooku wasn’t the sort to do something as plebeian as screaming; he became even icier, if it had been possible, draping himself in his certitude, but the booming voice which would have been perfect to declaim ancient Naboo classical tragedies, took to it like he was on a stage.

Said booming voice was getting hoarse, because sometime Yan Dooku was a moron who never learned and tried to out-stubborn a teenager.

Well, technically Senior Padawan Jinn wasn’t a teenager anymore, but sometimes he did a very good impression!

“Do they even realize we are still here? That they are in public?” She asked Master Yaddle who was also observing the scene and wincing because Jinn had a voice that became really grating on the nerves when he was yelling.

“When young people like that are, the world better bend, because certainly they won’t.” Yaddle remarked sadly.

“You’re only three hundred, still almost a tadpole.” Master T'ra Saa remarked gently, then she offered her shoulder and Yaddle hopped on it. The human morons could settle their dispute themselves.

“Isn’t it ice-cream day in the refectory?”

“The one with the bugs’ legs, I hope they have.”

“You and I my friend.”

 

In the training room, Dooku and Jinn were still raging against each other. During their quarrel, everything came out into the open; Jinn’s need for connecting with other beings, a need which Dooku found to be ridiculous and even more so, dangerous, and which he had tried his best to train out of him, the constant search for the betrayal that Dooku advised and that Jinn qualified savagely as “ _constant bullshit pushing exasperated people to evil because that way, they will at least reap the benefits and not only be berated…_ ” and the list went on and on, full of the resentment of a pair ill-suited for each other, full of the resentment of a Knight taking a Padawan too young, of an almost adult-Padawan trying to spread his wings and only finding admonishments instead of careful encouragements…

“I’m only trying to protect you. I won’t always be behind you to save your skin when inevitably, your latest pathetic stray will turn around and bite your hand!” Dooku scolded. “Or worse, way worse; one of your ill-advised little projects will have more fangs that you think and will cause the death of someone! What will you do when the blood of an innocent is on the floor and the knife is in the hand of one of your numerous bad ideas?”

“I don’t need your counsel if it’s only to isolate myself and refuse my support to those who need it! What can’t you see that not everyone is out to betray you, stop you, or surpass you?” Qui-Gon Jinn snarled in answer, red-faced and eyes burning, and then he continued, snapping the words like he was trying to bite: “ One day, you will try to face a crisis alone and you'll get such an unfathomable idea that you will be the one to get someone killed!”

“How dare you! I’m perfectly aware of my limits!”

“Only your ego and paranoia think your limits are so far away the sun can’t touch them! You’ve become so entrenched in your own importance, I think if you found a Sith Lord tomorrow, you wouldn’t even tell the Council because Yan Dooku has all the answers and needs no help!!”

“You’re stepping out of line, Padawan!”

“As I am every time I’m telling you something you dislike!”

“That’s it!” Dooku snarled, “I’m recommending you for your Trials, if you think I have nothing more to teach you! Let’s see how you fare without me. I’ve taught you everything you were ready to listen to and the galaxy will force the rest into your stubborn head! I only hope you won’t have brought home our own doom before!”

And, profoundly unhappy with each other, they parted way for the night, Dooku going back to their quarters, and Jinn going to sleep on the newly-Knighted Tahl’ sofa, as every time he had a row with his Master.

Nobody saw the small silhouette that had been in the corner of the room, so discreet, so hidden in the Force, that even Yaddle hadn’t perceived it. That old Jedi had tried to mediate between the other two already, several times in fact and always without results. When this time they had begun to trade barbs disguised as conversation, he had faded into the background, hoping they would load their problems off of their chests and start mending their relationship. Shaking his head sadly, Yoda went back to his room, leaning heavily on his cane and his heart full of a sinister foreboding. He had a long meditation ahead of him and the sinister prophecies the two had spat at each other would be the principal subject of them.

In the regal and high hallways of the Jedi Temple, he seemed very small, very alone and very lost.

                                    

 

 


End file.
